Register Now

In order to be able to post messages on the SailNet Community forums, you must first register. Please enter your desired user name, your email address and other required details in the form below.Please note: After entering 3 characters a list of Usernames already in use will appear and the list will disappear once a valid Username is entered.

User Name:

Password

Please enter a password for your user account. Note that passwords are case-sensitive.

Password:

Confirm Password:

Email Address

Please enter a valid email address for yourself.

Email Address:

OR

Log-in

User Name

Password

Remember Me?

Human Verification

In order to verify that you are a human and not a spam bot, please enter the answer into the following box below based on the instructions contained in the graphic.

Additional Options

Miscellaneous Options

Automatically parse links in text

Automatically embed media (requires automatic parsing of links in text to be on).

Automatically retrieve titles from external links

Click here to view the posting rules you are bound to when clicking the'Submit Reply' button below

Sorry JiffyLube but there is a problem with your solution... I imagine anything fine enough to pick up small pieces of plastic would pick up a lot of sealife as well. The cure could kill more than the disease.

But I agree, the talk should be about solutions. Stopping the production of plastic is also not a solution. Unfortunately, I don't have a good solution for you but I suspect that the best one will lie in the production of better plastics.

Well then, how about a plastic type material that breaks down faster? Whatever idea helps solve the problem the whole world will have to get behind it, because the U.S. can't do it alone.

10-31-2009 02:00 AM

chris_gee

"deception, disruption, exaggeration, exploitation and when all eles fails...........blow the sh*t up"

Yeah right. Rainbow Warrior? I can't debate the detail of every action by Greenpeace. I simply don't know the detail. For what it is worth I am not a member of Greenpeace or the CIA.

But I wonder if I should be concerned. No I am now.

There is another problem with land run off? Sorry mate have seen that strategy used too often for it to cut any ice with me.

10-30-2009 05:39 PM

GreatWhite

I consider myself an environmentalist but I have absolutely no affiliation with any enviro group whatsoever ...I but I believe that with the astronomical advances that are taking place with nanotechnology we will easily be able to produce all our current energy demand with solar within 20 years...

So regarding the tar sands I really think that we should be careful and bring a careful eye to what is going on there. The scale is absolutely MASSIVE and it really threatens a huge amount of water which is very precious in the Alberta province...

Similar to the bird pics...sometimes having a focus brought to an issue can have some benefits...not saying I have any answers but as most of us live in democratic countries it helps to know what is going on...

You can't believe everything you read but I sure a heck appreciate having ALL sides if the argument available to me.

I wouldn't want to miss any of the views...although many are sponsored.

10-30-2009 04:31 PM

DCClancy

Self preservation......

To quote "Mother Nature, in whose lap we sit and who sustains us, sometimes eats her young" as we debate the issues . I agree , about the enviro's wasting and polluting as they protest, as I have said before , drastic action is required. Let's put money towards solar , or , ????? We are smart enough to put people on the moon , maybe , we could find a way to clean up the mess here. Put the cash towards inovation instead of bailing out auto companys. ??

Greenpeace is running rampant across Alberta’s oil sands. In the past few weeks, 37 activists have been arrested in a spate of incidents targeting North America’s most important energy resource.

The most recent occurred on Oct. 5 when 19 activists stormed an upgrader in Fort Saskatchewan, Alberta. They tied themselves to equipment which is used to transform heavy oil into gasoline.

The protesters unfurled banners reading “Climate Crime” and “Climate SOS” to draw attention to an industry they say is killing the planet.

In September, two-dozen Greenpeace commandoes kayaked down the Athabasca River to intercept a Suncor bridge where conveyor belts move bitumen into an oil sands upgrader.

But my favorite is the protestors that drove a convoy of pickup trucks into the heart of Shell Oil’s massive open pit mine, halting production.

They came from Edmonton to Fort McMurray, Alberta, a 360-mile round trip. The irony of burning all that gasoline to shut down a facility that helps to provide affordable gasoline was apparently lost on them.

Greenpeace says that it is putting a spotlight on the “climate crimes of the tar sands.”

Meanwhile, trouble is also brewing west of the oil sands in the Peace River region, an area that encompasses the Alberta and British Columbia border. It is here that an eco-terrorist is on the loose. His target is EnCana Corp (NYSE: ECA), which is working the vast unconventional pools of sour gas that lay a mile beneath the countryside.

In the past year he has blown up six sour gas pipelines. EnCana is a preeminent natural gas company in North America. The company is so afraid that the bomber is going to kill himself or somebody else they have posted an Osama bin Laden-like bounty of $1 million for information leading to a conviction. The newspapers are calling it the largest reward in Canadian history.

In a letter to the Dawson Creek Daily News the bomber wrote: “Return the land to what it was before you came every last bit of it… before things get a lot worse for you and your terrorist pals in the oil and gas business.”

deception, disruption, exaggeration, exploitation and when all eles fails...........blow the sh*t up

Post 1975 conservationism at it's finest

10-30-2009 09:50 AM

chris_gee

Attitude change starts with awareness and can grow with time even if it seems to do so slowly.
As for some scepticism about organisations environmental or not, fair enough, but it seems odd to spend "many many years" researching in depth into their backgounds. Guess the French secret service did that when they blew up Greenpeace's Rainbow Warrior, in the name of national security. Still a job is a job. Nudge nudge wink wink say no more.

10-30-2009 08:42 AM

wind_magic

I think we should start by giving people some hope.

How ?

Start by being honest about some things so that we can filter out the non-sense. Honestly says that curb side recycling doesn't work for anything except aluminum cans, simple as that. The energy used by curb side recycling does not justify its cost, especially for plastics, and that's even after you take human labor costs out of the equation, which environmentalists of course already do (they think our time has no value, that we should all pitch in for the environment no matter what the cost in time and energy).

Then let's move on to getting rid of the boogey men like boaters who are blamed for all kinds of problems when the real problems are things like runoff from streets, fields, etc, into the water system.

Then let's realize somewhere along the way that human beings are the reason we care about having a clean environment, not the environment for its own sake, and stop this culture of talking about human beings like we are only a problem. People just don't like it, they don't respond well to it, and if you buy into the argument completely the only reasonable path is to toss everybody you know off a high cliff to cut down on the "problem". Being a human being on this planet means that we generate a certain amount of waste, there will never be a way to avoid that, all organisms on this planet create waste that is toxic to themselves and usually others (though not always, oxygen is a plant waste product, for example). Human beings are no different, we will always create waste.

Then after we fix people's brains so that they are thinking like human beings again then they might be able to filter out a lot of the environmental non-sense they hear and think about things in a reasonable perspective. Once we get there and undo the damage that has been done then we can focus on actual solutions to real problems - problems like mercury in the water, problems like figuring out how to clean up the superfund sites, problems like runoff from the water sheds. We can focus on finding real solutions to real problems that will yield real results.

I've said before in similar threads that you have to include the human being in all of this, solutions that disregard humans won't work. What does that mean ? It means, for example, that human beings like to have fun, so stop thinking you're going to be able to get rid of all of the personal watercraft because it hurts the environment, because that simply isn't going to happen. Focus instead of making the vehicles in a way that won't harm the environment as much. Stop trying to make it so people can't drive on the beaches in North Carolina and start realizing that it actually causes very little in the way of damage, just because it seems like it does doesn't mean that it actually does. Allow for the fact that people are going to want to race cars on the Salt Flats, yeah, maybe it leaves some tracks, but are tracks in the Salt Flats responsible for many deaths in L.A. or N.Y. from toxins ? Not really.

Stop worrying about who is throwing glass in the ocean, start actually trying to actually find a place to store nuclear waste, etc. It has taken the environmental movement more than 50 years to screw people's heads up to the point that they can't even think rationally about things anymore, it is time to fix the damage. It is time for people to realize that they aren't helping the environment by going to the outdoor store (church) to buy a tent and some new boots, and that they are helping the environment when they pass legislation opening a nuclear waste dumping site. It is time for people to understand what they don't know so that they can understand more that they should know. Hint: If you actually believe what you learned from urban textbooks that the poor pitiful farmers were destroying the countryside until the smart urban folks came out and showed them all how to plow around the hills instead of up and down, then you've got a long ways to go. If you want to know about the environment and how to save it, get out of the city and go out to the country and learn something from the farmers you look down on, hang around with people who are in the environment and who really are concerned with things like fertilizer runoff.

At some point, once trust is restored, people might actually start believing they can make a difference and stop believing that no matter what they do it won't matter. At some point they might watch a movie about the next thing that is going to destroy us all and stop believing it, maybe keep their eye on the ball and fix real problems.

I say pay fishermen to drag fine nets through the surface of the ocean to collect the trash, and transfer the trash onto pick up boats that will take the trash back to land for disposal.

Who has another idea?

Sorry JiffyLube but there is a problem with your solution... I imagine anything fine enough to pick up small pieces of plastic would pick up a lot of sealife as well. The cure could kill more than the disease.

But I agree, the talk should be about solutions. Stopping the production of plastic is also not a solution. Unfortunately, I don't have a good solution for you but I suspect that the best one will lie in the production of better plastics.

Not sure what agenda someone who is concerned about albatrosses might have. Shocking that sailors would be against cleaning our waterways. Was the Clean Water Act a bad idea? Should we be permitted to dump oil and fuel into the water? There is a giant mess of plastic in the ocean. It's a fact.

Hardalee, it took me awhile to find the right harddrive and folder so could use your post as a example of onion peeling.

You sight a link by the MB Aquarium as to say " if they say it, it must true "; well, here's peeling the onion in reverse.

Starting several layers in with Dave Fenton (Fenton Communications) this will lead you to EMS ( Environmental Media Sources ) now, understand what their purpose in life has been since the mid 90's. EMS exists to make money, it turns a profit for Fenton Communications by improving the bottom lines of a wide variety of Fenton clients. ( Environmental & Reseach Orgs )

Once you get pass that layer, next you'll see who funds them, such as the Tides foundation, Pew and Packard and the likes; research their history and agendas.

Once you're able to stop shaking your head in disgust, look up who their frequent donees are and you will find the likes of SeaWeb, NRDC, Environmental Defense, National Audubon Society, and the Monterey Bay Aquarium.

I know this was a half assed ( missing a lot of info, but it's kinda late ) however, you should get the idea here, someone at the MB Aquarium prints what is needed and in return MB Aquarium gets it's much needed funding.( that kind of money doesn't come from gate fees and public donations )

There is always a agenda or ulterior motive

10-30-2009 03:22 AM

JiffyLube

There has been a lot of talk on this subject both ways, but not many if any solutions. Now that this subject has been beaten to death, what we should be talking about are solutions. Who among all of you has a solution or combination of ideas to solve this problem?

I'll start with one idea even if he sounds stupid.

I say pay fishermen to drag fine nets through the surface of the ocean to collect the trash, and transfer the trash onto pick up boats that will take the trash back to land for disposal.

Who has another idea?

This thread has more than 10 replies.
Click here to review the whole thread.